Banks battle talent attrition as new-age tech cos line up with attractive offers

Lenders are witnessing an abnormally high level of attrition rate as new-age companies are engaging in a talent war to offer lucrative salary packages, especially in the IT segment. Banks like HDFC Bank NSE 1.22 %, Axis Bank NSE -0.16 %, IndusInd NSE 2.54 % and Bandhan have seen attrition between 30-50%. The worst affected is the microfinance sector where companies have seen attrition as high as 60% among young employees.


HDFC Bank, which has seen attrition levels of more than 40% in sales officers, is seeing an overall attrition rate of 19%. "The bank's attrition has gone up to 19% with the reopening of the economy post the pandemic-induced slowdown," said Sashidhar Jagdsihan, managing director of HDFC Bank, at the recently held annual general meeting. "The number is 'embarrassingly' higher among the youngsters and efforts will be made to reduce it." IndusInd Bank, too, is seeing high levels of attrition among the junior staff. "At the junior level the churn is around 32% and it's happening across the industry in the tech and frontline support staff; managing this is not possible beyond a certain point," said Sumant Kathpalia, managing director of IndusInd Bank NSE 2.54 %. "At the senior level, we have had no exits at all."

Banks across the board have continued to see high levels of attrition, especially among the junior staff, attracted by lucrative pay packets and a surge in talent seeking especially in the IT sector. They are resorting to giving perks like rental accommodation to new joinees from other states and cities. Suryoday Small Finance Bank NSE 4.95 % is offering an education allowance for children at up to ₹500 per child to employees whose salary is is less than ₹25,000 a month. There are 250 employees who have benefited from this in July.

"We have attrition levels of 35%," said Baskar Babu, founder-CEO of Suryoday SFB. "We have introduced education allowance and health insurance benefit schemes to retain employees, the limits are the same across all employee levels. We have also introduced free group accommodation for junior staff who come from outside Mumbai to ensure they are saving up on rent outgo."

"As a policy, we focus a lot on building and developing our staff, we recruit freshers and we have our own training centre," said Chandra Shekhar Ghosh, managing director of Bandhan Bank NSE -1.53 %. "We have this infrastructure in place where we keep getting people, train them.... To that extent, the impact will be lower."

According to data from MFIN, the total attrition rate among microfinance lenders is 48.7% while those on probation - less than six months of employment - is 76%.